#kindness core

[sakura-the-fox]

Being kind can be such a burden, but the world is better because you are

[sakura-the-fox]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Wishing you warmth and love this holiday evening.

[sakura-the-fox]

You are so loved in so many ways that you will never know.

The waiter at your favorite restaurant thought your t-shirt was so cool. That girl at the supermarket loved your laugh. You made a little kids day with your smile.

Think of all the people you see every day that you think something kind about and they never know. People do the same for you.

[primarilypeace]

As a teacher, I understand the significance of COMMON CORE. I get it, okay? It is important that every child in our country is following the same game plan. It’s equally important that we’re preparing our children for success in college and their life beyond. It does have its problems though.

First, there’s a lot of excess in there that children are required to learn when in fact, they aren’t cognitively ready to learn it. Then there’s testing. My gosh, don’t get me started on the amount of testing we have to do now. Most importantly though, we’ve lost the time and gained a new apathy towards character education. 

We used to have time scheduled in our day for character education. Now, we have to integrate it (at times on the sly) into our reading and writing schedules. Programs from our past that focused on empathy and violence prevention have been tossed aside. If you’re lucky, a school counselor, or social worker may cover these topics with your class if they’re able to, but that is a far cry from the consistent daily programs we had going before COMMON CORE.

As a peace educator, I’m pushing the KINDNESS CORE. These are the skills that our children need for life as well. They must learn them early and build upon them in order to become respectful, kind, tolerant adults living in our world.

So, while we’re teaching our children to “talk about their thinking” with COMMON CORE, let’s start making an effort to teach our children to “talk about their feelings” with KINDNESS CORE while we’re at it. Then build on it and get them to talk about  “other’s feelings”, “other’s differences” and “helping others” to boot. That way, they’ll be ready for college, but they’ll be kindest college students in the world.